Sunday, January 4, 2009

Terror Peninsula Prevails

As the new year begins, descends the time of well being, opportunities, resurgence and new era renaissance amid financial crisis, global downturn, approaching general election 2009, Israel hostility and job shedding.

Deviating from all these good things, talk of optimism I would talk of something from past depressing but relevant, long lasting in theory, story and data.

Question:Before I start with anything some questions. Don't feel naive as u can't answer them. I very much expect the same. so here it follows....1. What places other than trident, Taj and Oberoi hotel were attacked in recent mumbai attack (26/11/2008 to be precise) ?2. How many people were killed at those places?3. What's history and relevance of those places ?

Paranoiacs shatter Mumbai

Here goes the story- a bunch of terrorists enter mumbai in boats n attack various places in order to dent image of capital and create panic among people sitting in mumbai an remote india killing 188 and injuring still more in an 60 hour encounter with streaming security agencies.

This much we all know n can bet on winning a KBC based on these facts. I would talk something rather more intriguing. First of all answer to previous questions. BEST bus terminal and Mumbai railway station were the two other places attacked. And don't blame your weak memory coz your mind can't remember what has not been fed to it.

Bravo Media

"Enough is Enough", " Attack on Pakistan", "war on mumbai", "airstrike an option" are some of the headlines rather term the electronic media has coined. As the rest of nation did, with my family and friends I kept following the news relentlessly vying for a 5 minutes coverage of those two mentioned places....... couldn't get...... Media made us feel that it is not the railway stations, but the Taj Hotel that symbolise the city of Mumbai.We were made to believe that in a poverty-stricken country of over a 100 crore people the palatial structures of the Mumbai are the icons of India. Can the hotels of Mumbai like Taj and Oberoi be the icons of the real India? How can the media forget about the Chatrapati Shivaji Railway Terminus, earlier known as Victoria Terminus or Bombay VT which is an old heritage structure of 131 years? The killing of the commoners in the Mumbai railway station has hardly any news value to the media as because they don’t have any Pan card or driving license. It is really a pity, that even the so called media heavy weightsdid not even for a while take note of the fact that many from cities as different as Lucknow, Chennai, Kolkata, Patna and Delhi had set their feet first in Mumbai only in thisstation.Later after many years only they had gained their identity as MumbaikersTV channels did not give due importance to the VT terminus mayhem.

Rights of media? "Corporates"!!!

Then what moral right do they have to telecast the protest demonstration of the common Mumbaikers against the terrorist attacks? Did we ever see television footage of the dead bodies lined up in the J JHospital of Mumbai? Isn’t it true that all the famous TV anchors were busy with airing the footages of dead bodies of the celebrities at the Taj and Oberoi only? The irony was that the TV cameras and the OB Vans could not leave the Taj and the Nariman Point areas. Even the complete closure of Mumbai’s lifeline, the BEST bus services and its famous railway system did not get required media attention.I should also draw your attention to what great BBC did during the Mumbai attacks. During the attack on London Tube Rail the so called independentBBC did not fail to label the attackers as “terrorists’. But for the Mumbai Attack, the BBC was liberal enough! To them, the terrorists in Mumbai were just the ‘gunmen’. Why suchdiscrimination?

The same corporate media is rooting for an American 9/11 type response. They shamelessly advocate the Bush doctrine and justify this by stating that the US has not been subject to any terrorist attack since 9/11. The rightwing BJP is not far behind. Arun Jaitley, the BJP spokesperson has stated, “What happened in Mumbai is India’s 9/11 and India’s response should be substantially closer to what US did after 9/11”. he Bollywood directors now can look for newer plots from the near-ravaged hotels of Mumbai. But a public display of anxiety and emotions on the part of a news channel anchors is a clear deviation of journalistic ethics.

DIVIDERecently I came across two news items:1. "A turkey citizen was spared because he was muslim"2. Phone excerpts of terrorists :" musalmano ko chhod do".Do we expect our so called "sensitive" media publishing these news item availing extrimists new weapon of mindwashing when at list 40 people killed were muslims.